Rover Landing Site Narrowed Down

The landing site for Curiosity, the next Mars rover, has been narrowed down to two choices. Curiosity will either explore Eberswalde crater, an ancient river delta, or Gale crater, the home of a three-mile high mountain.

"We are thrilled to go to either one of these landing sites," said John Grotzinger, a Caltech geology professor and project scientist for the NASA mission. He spoke at a press conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, as reported by Space.com. "It's like two different flavors of ice cream—do you like chocolate or vanilla on Mars? So we go back and forth a lot."

The rover will launch sometime between November 25 and December 18 of this year, arriving at Mars in August 2012. During its two-year mission, Curiosity will roam the Red Planet, searching for clues as to whether Mars is—or ever was—able to support microbial life. Read more here.